Using JDBC Drivers with AWS Glue and Spark SQL

Learn how to access the JDBC database of your choice with AWS Glue using DataDirect JDBC drivers.

What is AWS Glue?

AWS Glue is an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) service available as part of Amazon’s hosted web services. Glue is intended to make it easy for users to connect their data in a variety of data stores, edit and clean the data as needed, and load the data into an AWS-provisioned store for a unified view. Announced in 2016 and officially launched in Summer 2017, Glue is expected to be a popular tool on the AWS platform because it greatly simplifies the cumbersome process of setting up and maintaining ETL jobs.

JDBC and Glue

Glue supports accessing data via JDBC, and currently the databases supported through JDBC are Postgres, MySQL, Redshift, and Aurora. Of course, JDBC drivers exist for many other databases besides these four. If you want to access any other database with JDBC, you can do so using JDBC drivers through Spark connections. The data can then be processed in Spark SQL or joined with other data sources, and AWS Glue can fully leverage the data in Spark.

Using the DataDirect JDBC connectors you can access many other data sources via Spark for use in AWS Glue. For example, this AWS blog demonstrates the use of Amazon Quick Insight for BI against data in an AWS Glue catalog. Quick Insight supports Amazon data stores and a few other sources like MySQL and Postgres. With DataDirect JDBC through Spark, you can open up any JDBC-capable BI tool to the full breadth of databases supported by DataDirect, including MongoDB, Salesforce, Oracle, and many others.

Accessing JDBC Data through Spark with DataDirect

So, how do you setup a JDBC connection to access data through Spark using a JDBC driver? Here is a quick overview of the simple steps to get started.

Download and locally install the DataDirect JDBC driver, then copy the driver jar to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). The drivers have a free 15 day trial license period, so you’ll easily be able to get this set up and tested in your environment.

Create the Job to copy your data from Spark to your desired destination

Alternate Method

There is more than one way to work with your data via JDBC in Amazon Glue. If you’d like to see a different solution, we have a tutorial to help you import your external data into Spark data frames using DataDirect JDBC drivers. Once imported, you can then access the data in Spark directly with Glue, without the need for JDBC from your Glue jobs.

For more details, see this tutorial with the specific steps to access JDBC data in Spark. The example in this tutorial uses JDBC access to Salesforce data, but you can follow these exact same steps for any data source using any of the DataDirect JDBC drivers.

Get Started with DataDirect JDBC and AWS Glue

The industry standard for JDBC database connectivity, the Progress DataDirect JDBC drivers solve the limitations of Type 4 JDBC drivers, delivering the fastest, most scalable Java application performance. The DataDirect line of JDBC drivers supports all major databases and include advanced enterprise functionality such as application failover, bulk load, SSL data encryption, and operating system authentication using the Kerberos protocol. DataDirect also publishes a Security Vulnerability Response Policy to address all databases in a timely manner—including SaaS, big data and relational sources.

MySQL, written in C and C++, was first released internally on 23 May 1995. Version 5.1 was released 27 November 2008 and the next version will MySQL 6. In April 2009, Oracle Corporation entered into an agreement to purchase Sun Microsystems, current owners of the MySQL intellectual property. Although the deal was approved by Sun's board of directors, it has not yet been finalized.

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